


Ripples

by gothelder



Series: Ripples [1]
Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 76
Genre: F/M, Multi, Other
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-20
Updated: 2019-08-24
Packaged: 2020-09-18 23:28:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,116
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20321296
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gothelder/pseuds/gothelder
Summary: Many things changed when the bombs dropped, for some even their very lives.Vault Tec wasn't the only company performing experiments.A single betrayal can change many lives, but it takes a special few to come together to fix things.





	1. One - Zane

**Author's Note:**

> The story is mine, the world is not. The very foundation they stand on is Bethesda's, but the souls in the characters are mine. Fallout is Bethesda's. I just like playing in it. Any Npcs they created are theirs. Any OC's I create are mine.

Zane woke with a jolt of adrenaline pumping through his system. The light above him and the mirrored wall across from him told him exactly where he was. His gun was, of course, gone. There was no sign of the mark that he had been assigned to kill. He was in an interrogation room. He wondered who was watching him behind the glass. 

“You need to call my handler.” He said with more clarity than he thought his cottony mouth could have done. They must have drugged him. That was likely how they had gotten him from the roof of the building to here without a fight or even the memory of it. The handcuffs attached to the ring on the table might have helped. Damn, whatever they had given him, he still felt weak.

“Zane Lee Michaels. You have been arrested for the attempted murder of the Mayor of Philadelphia.” The police guard in the room said. "You did shoot and kill his aid."

“Attempted?” He asked. Fuck, his shot had gone wild. He hadn’t cleared the mark. What had gone wrong? There would be no bonus in the bank and he was arrested. His bosses were not going to be pleased with him. “Did you call my handler? I can give you the number if you need it.”

“We have made all necessary calls. You will be picked up shortly.” 

“There could be a bonus in it for you if you make that call quickly.” 

The guard glanced at the door before frowning and shaking his head. “May justice give you a long sentence.”

Zane couldn't help the grin that crossed his face. He was justice, in a matter of speaking. His government had found him during the war, after he had sniped more kills than the front line had been able to kill. In fact the front line was only still alive because he had killed the attackers before they had reached them. The last five years the government had been hiring him to clean up certain ‘problems before they could come to light. This was the first one that he had failed to accomplish.

“I could really use a drink, gin maybe? Be a good man and get me one?” Zane said, but it was only silence that the guard returned. “A cigarette maybe?”

The look of disgust that the guard gave him only made the grin widen. Then there was a buzz and he watched his handler walked into the room via the mirror in front of him. Finally. 

“Good to see you Jim. New hair cut?” Zane said, but Jim did not return the grin. Instead he shooed the guard out and closed the door. “I hope you saved my gun, you know that thing was expensive.” 

“Zane. We needed this one.” Jim said, ignoring Zane’s attempted humor. “I am sorry, but you will be retiring.” He ran a hand through his receding blond hair line. The plugs he had gotten were as cheap as the suite he wore. Zane wondered for the billionth time what the man did with his money. He got paid nearly as much as he did yet he always looked like he could barely pay the bills. Though the pot belly said that he ate well.

Zane's blood ran cold. “Retiring? For one mistake? Jim I did 50 perfect jobs. That’s better than any other employee that you have.” He met his own eyes in the mirror. Lips parted in shock made his cheeks look gaunter than normal. The drugs he had been given had sunk his dark eyes even deeper in their sockets the frame of his dark hair made them look even deeper. He could see how panicky he looked and he absolutely hated it.

“Yeah, but this one was very special.” Jim said with such a nonchalant wave of his hand that Zane nearly growled.

“Jim, this is bullshit.” Zane said as he tested the chains on his wrists. He had known before he tried that they wouldn’t budge. He was a trapped rat.

“Zane you are the best and we do feel bad about this, but the mayor of Philly really needed to be taken care of. Since you failed and the attempt was noticed, he has made a few suggestions that we are inclined to take.” Jimmies straight face was being ruined by a slight smile that kept threatening to take better shape.

“What the fuck does that mean?” Damn chains were secure, if he had a bobby pin he might be about to twist his hand enough to open them. They must have frisked him well though because he felt nothing along his gum line. He wasn't very good at locks anyway. Long distance shooting was his best skill.

“There’s a man down in Virginia that is doing some tests. You will be sent down to... help him out. There is actually a chance that you will come out of this. You are lucky, usually our failures are just wiped off the board. But you know that, don’t you?”

Zane watched Jim in the mirror as the man walked closer to him slowly. He pulled a hypodermic needle out of his suit’s jacket. As soon as Jim got close enough to try to pierce him with it, Zane moved as much as he could. His leg shot out, kicking Jim in the paunch. Jim dropped with a very angry look on his face. Zane was still hunched over since he was attached to the table, but he was ready to kick out again if Jim came any closer again.

“Fuck this Jim. I did exactly what you told me to do. A different area in the city would have made sure I could hit him, I had told you that. I told you He moved like he knew I was about to shoot him. Someone gave him intel.”

Jim’s smile changed a bit. It made Zane feel even colder. The shape of the smile told Zane exactly who had shared that intel. He knew who had turned traitor on him. What game was Jim playing?

“What did you do?” Zane finally asked, his throat suddenly dry. “What kind of trouble did you get in?”

Jim came closer to him via the other side of the table. He couldn't do much to stop Jim from that side. His hands were trapped so he couldn't try to get to the other side of the table without breaking both of his hands. Damn. Maybe he could kick him over the table.

“Do you know what you are worth to the other side?” Jim asked in a voice barely louder than a whisper. “Sure, I will need to settle down in another country, but I'll be a millionaire.”

The shock of knowing that he was a traitor, for Jim to sell him, shocked him so much that he lost a few seconds. The needle came down hard into his arm. Zane was pretty damn sure the thing scratched bone, it hurt so badly he nearly screamed. The burn of the drug didn’t help the pain. His vision got blurry as he landed on his knees. His tongue was quickly feeling numb and larger than it should be in his mouth. Yup, this was what they had given him before. He recognized the feel of cotton in his throat. 

“Where I am sending you, you have a chance Zane. Look me up some time if you make it through this. I’ll pay you back.” Jim promised, but why should Zane believe the lying bastard.

The world got dark. 

When he woke a second time it was first to what he thought were waves crashing against the shore. Then as his eyesight took better shape he found it to be a janitor type sweeping away something very slimy and mostly red, but mixed with pink and gray and yellow lumps. It was like someone had thrown up the insides of a possum and now this guy got stuck cleaning it up, but there was so much of it and there was something off about it that made Zane think that it wasn't opossum.

That was when he realized that his hands were now secured above his head at the top of a free standing and rounded arbor like thing, made of some very solid metal. He was happy to find that he was strong enough that he could now stand, mostly. Yet again, that was the extent of how much he could move. It was a circumstance that was getting old, to say the least. To his left were two other men in similar conditions as he was. Each of the three of them spaced about 10 feet apart. The room they were in appeared to be quite large from his angle. In fact they were up on some kind of slightly elevated platform. 

The janitor pushed the mess into a recess in the floor that was beyond the platform, before hosing the entire area, and Zane, down. The man had an emptiness in his eyes that was usually reserved for those that had to much electric shock, or were in a coma. 

"Hey. Where are we?" Zane asked, but got no response. The guy just shuffled off out of view.

A door opened. There was low speaking from someone that was more verbose than the janitor. Then the door closed and footsteps made their way towards him. 

"Ah the final one to waken. Good. We can get this experiment on the road." The man said with a slap to Zane’s back as he walked by. The man was walking behind the row of prisoners. Zane twisted his back and neck as much as he could while being tied up. He could barely see the guy, but he got a glimpse of him in a long white coat. Either a doctor or a scientist it seemed like. 

“What’s going on? What are you doing? Untie me, now.” Zane said while the other two that were tied up just moaned a bit.

“Ah, good! You are not as foggy as they are. I’ll save you for the last test.” He chuckled as he started punching buttons and changing the direction of something that looked like a giant ray gun, but with spikes. “I had a partial transfer with the one guy that woke up swinging. That’s why I now bind your wrists.” He said as though someone had asked. Zane was pretty sure that he hadn’t.

The ray gun thing pointed at the first of them and a vibration that even being near it was making his teeth rattle, shot out in nearly clear waves. The man burst into a pile of that possum gut looking stuff. Blood or something else warm flew over fast enough to sting when it hit Zane in the face. It trickled down his cheek and slid down his neck in a gelatinous glob. Zane felt like his tongue had lodged itself to the roof of his mouth. Fear, shock, terror, horror. Whatever he was feeling right now was a nasty mix of all of those.

The doctor fiddled with the ray gun thing again and pointed it at the second man. Without preamble, he again shot the almost visible vibrations at the man. The man’s skin slid off his body before the rest of the corpse went up in a puff of blood mist. The skin dropped to the floor like clothing in a bedroom. 

The ray gun shifted to him.

“Wai-” Zane screamed.


	2. Chapter Two - Iola

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eye-Oh-La is how her name phonetically sounds. Its an old name.

Iola stood on the stage, her long dress pouring down her body as her voice poured out the song. Her dress ended in a wave of lace, while her voice continued twining through the crowd. She held the microphone between her hands like the most delicate of flowers while her eyes moved around the room in an arresting manner. She was judging every single one of these assholes, because most of them were the very ones that had turned her down for a coding position in their computer departments.

She spotted her boss Tucker, a nice man and a friend of hers. She grinned maliciously at him and winked before moving her hands to fluff her breasts up once. He understood at once and started laughing hard enough that he had to set his beer down and hold a hand over his mouth to keep from spewing. Dear Tucker knew her woes. The simple matter of being female made her undesirable in the hiring Department.

The song ended and the recorded tracks began. She headed off the stage to join Tucker and find herself a strong drink. This had been supposed to be a temporary job. She had been supposed to get a job as a coder after school, but with tits like she had, apparently it wasn’t meant to be. At least that was what one of the bald ass holes had told her during the interview. He had gestured to her chest like it was a third person when he said that little tidbit.

She had to pause long enough to smile and giggle inanely at a few of her fans. Then one of them took her arm and pulled her off to the side. She resisted the urge to make a scene here, so instead she glared at his hand and considered biting it.

He followed her gaze and released her arm, but then went on to pet her arm. This particular asshole was the hiring rep that had dismissed her this afternoon. “See this is much better than being stuck in front of a computer all day. This shows off your assets better. We should get a drink. Are you hungry?”

“I don’t get drinks with a misogynistic asshole that cant get his eyes past my tits. If you touch me again, I will break those spindly fingers of yours.” Apparently he hadn’t gone home yet, because she had hacked into his home computer and left him some gifts in the form of nasty viruses on his computer and in his Mr. Handy. He would never find his deodorant, or a pair of socks without a hole. She would think up a few more things for that Mr. Handy to do once she was calmer. She turned to leave.

He grabbed her arm again.

She grabbed his hand and twisted in such a manner that left him on the floor with his hand behind him and up in a painful manner. A little pressure and he could feel the fingers about to snap. He screamed.

Then she heard a strange noise, almost a siren, but undulating. She turned to see what it was and hell seemed to open up. The wall crumbled, raining bricks on the stage and those sitting nearest to it. Those that could, screamed and either ran or tried to help others escape and run. 

They were barely out when a closer section of the wall began to fall. Some of those that had fallen in the first were now buried under the new rubble. Iola dropped the man’s hand and made it three steps towards where she had last seen Tucker, when the sound increased. She was flung forward and crashed into someone as she fell to the dusty floor.

“-ait. Wait!” The man she had run into said as she pulled herself off of him. She jumped off of him and moved a few steps away as she watched him slowly stand up and inspect himself like he was expecting to find something missing. He looked mostly ok, though his suit had blood splatter on it. Something was dribbling out of his dark hair and down his pale neck. She didn’t recognize him, which lately was a good thing.

Iola looked around for other survivors, but then stilled. This wasn’t the club, this was a shop, though whatever it had once sold had all been taken off the shelves. The only light that was coming in, came through a large display window that was likely only still standing because of the strength of the dust on it. She tried to think of which shop shared a wall with the club, but then she heard another noise that distracted her. “Tucker?” She asked, but this all felt off. They weren't even in the club that she had started in. The world had taken a side step and she wasn't sure where that had taken them.

The sound turned into a hiss and a dark human shape with glowing eyes ran right at her. The very terror of having that horror running toward her had her moving. The thing was the nightmare of every child that showed up in the dark. She stepped aside and with a slight push, redirected the creatures movement to crash into some shelving. It fell, and then turned on its stomach to crawl towards her.

The dim light from the window landed on its face and she saw the crystalline shapes that were growing out of the burnt features. Lips so thin and pulled back that its snarl was even more menacing, but for the shreds of something that were stuck in its teeth. 

She was so terrified by its haunting appearance but for a few moments she was unable to move. Thankfully the man with her didn't seem to have that problem. His standing form brought a foot down sharply on the back of the creatures neck, snapping it quickly.

“Are you okay?” He asked her without doing any of the inane things like petting her that others were wont to do. Hell, with the dim light in there she even got the impression that he was looking at her face and not her chest.

“I'm fine.” She said without preamble. “What was that thing?”

“I don't know.” He said has he looked around the shop. He look just as confused as she was. “I'm not sure where we are either. This isn't where I was a minute ago.”

“I was singing in a club. This isn't the club” She needed her brain to reboot soon. She needed some semblance of reality to reassert itself.

“That explains the dress.” He said dryly.

She shot him a glance that could have cut, but he just continued speaking. 

“I was being tested on. Something with sound waves I think.” He held up his hands to show the bracelet portions of the shackles that still graced his wrists. The chain between them was mostly missing.

“Sound waves.” She mused before turning at another sound that was coming from outside. It sounded like a train, sort of.


End file.
